Metro photo app



  • A few lessons that I've learned from (accidentally) using the Windows 8.1 Photo app:

    1. By default extension association, every picture is a high-res photo and should be viewed in glorious fullscreen. Even if it's a 32x32 icon.

    2. Fuck your folders. There's no way to browse pictures one-by-one in a folder, unless you've added them to a photo library. Browsing from a thumbdrive? Sucks to be you.

    3. Zooming out goes like this: 130%-120%-110%-100%-your photo library.

    4. Yes, even if your picture is not in the said library, and you can't get back to it without exiting the app and loading it again.

    5. Like in every good, well-behaved fullscreen application*, ESC key takes you out of everything.

    6. Oh, except the application itself. Exiting an application by using the ESC key is so MS-DOS.

    7. Close buttons are so 2012.

    8. The new, hip way to close a fullscreen app is to grab it on the top and drag to the bottom of the screen.

    9. Metro apps running in the background don't care to manifest themselves with even as much as a button on the taskbar. You'll find them by mousing over your top-left corner and discovering that for the past few hours, Windows has helpfully kept the application you thought you've closed in memory.

    And,on a totally unrelated note: you can have your application pinned to the taskbar on both of your monitors, but system clock and notification area only on one. Why? Because fuck you, that's why.

    *I'm a strong believer in the principle that full-screen apps should use ESC key to at least lead you to an "exit" option, and windowed apps should use Alt+F4. Microsoft, however, seems confused as to whether Metro apps are windows or not - you can grab them and move them around, and they close with Alt+F4, but they don't have standard window buttons and you can't make them overlap, because.



  • You expected anything nice from a stock metro app? You silly person.

    In all seriousness, I find all metro apps to be silly, at least with their current UI design. I use a 2-monitor setup, and it's really silly having 2 metro apps on a 27 inch and a 24 inch monitor. The performance limitations also neuter even Skype, making missing calls inevitable. I basically use it for the start menu, and that's it.



  • TRWTF is, of course, that there are people still stupid enough to use Windows 8.



  • @Evo said:

    TRWTF is, of course, that there are people still stupid enough to use Windows 8.
    After using it for 6 months now, the best thing I can say is that it's a lot like W7 once you install the correct programs, and the new start screen grows on you. Everything else is stupid (the task manager's nice, though).



  • I really like Windows 8, but I totally ignore anything Metro. I don't like how you have windows and not-quite-windows, and two separate taskbars. It's as if Microsoft thought their UI was too easy and wanted cheap replicas of existing concepts. Since I rarely, if ever, use Metro apps I don't have to worry about it, and if I do it's some dumb Metro game so I'm not trying to multitask anyway.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @lushr said:

    After using it for 6 months now, the best thing I can say is that it's a lot like W7 once you install the correct programs
     

    "Programs"? Plural?

    You know, you can get the ENTIRE Windows 7 experience with only a single installation...



  • Also, it appears that they hard-coded the app to look at the user's picture folder instead of using the picture library settings - it definitely ignores the default folder setting (i.e. set default save location somewhere other than %userprofile%\Pictures).


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    "A few lessons that I've learned from (accidentally) using the Windows 8.1 Photo app:"

     Don't.  Right-click a picture in Windows Explorer and choose preview from the popup menu.  That gives you the Win7-era viewer.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @lushr said:

    it's really silly having 2 metro apps on a 27 inch and a 24 inch monitor.

     You can grab a Metro app from the top of the monitor and move it partway across the monitor horizontally to get a splitscreen view:  You can either have the desktop and one metro app each take up half a monitor, or you can get two Metro apps sharing one monitor.  (This is slightly different from Windows 8, where the split was about 400 pixels and the rest of the monitor, instead of a 50-50 split.

     Also, IE11 doesn't seem to like the Quote button--it just refreshes the page. 



  • @FrostCat said:

    Right-click a picture in Windows Explorer and choose preview from the popup menu.  That gives you the Win7-era viewer.
     

    Make sure to rebind the association while you're at it.



  • My favourite Windows 8 experience so far is when it took 3 hours to remove it from my laptop for some reason. Presumably, UEFI, something something, fuck you that's why.



  • @aapis said:

    My favourite Windows 8 experience so far is when it took 3 hours to remove it from my laptop for some reason. Presumably, UEFI, something something, fuck you that's why.

    It took 3 hours to reformat your hard drive? And you blame the OS you're removing? Or am I missing something?


  • Considered Harmful

    @aapis said:

    My favourite Windows 8 experience so far is when it took 3 hours to remove it from my laptop for some reason. Presumably, UEFI, something something, fuck you that's why.

    Think of all the time you saved in the long run.



  • @joe.edwards said:

    @aapis said:
    My favourite Windows 8 experience so far is when it took 3 hours to remove it from my laptop for some reason. Presumably, UEFI, something something, fuck you that's why.

    Think of all the time you we saved in the long run.

    FTFY.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @lushr said:

    After using it for 6 months now, the best thing I can say is that it's a lot like W7 once you install the correct programs
     

    "Programs"? Plural?

    You know, you can get the ENTIRE Windows 7 experience with only a single installation...

    Computers (like my aug 2013 laptop) come with a Win8 license nowadays. And since I'm a cheapskate it's a consumer version so now downgrade rights...

    Rather just install StartIsBack and pay the €2,25 ($3) and have a mostly-Win7-like experience and do everything legally than having an illegal installation or spending a lot of money on Win7. And it does have a nice taskbar



  • @dhromed said:

    @FrostCat said:

    Right-click a picture in Windows Explorer and choose preview from the popup menu.  That gives you the Win7-era viewer.
     

    Make sure to rebind the association while you're at it.

    Well, now I'm smarter. And if they *have* a desktop app, why not use it by default? Who thought to himself "hmm, that windowed app is nice, but getting yanked out of one's workflow into a full-blown Metro app in which you can hardly do anything is what people have always wanted!

    And I can't get over the zoom-out-to-library thing. Seriously, did anyone test it for usability?

    Honestly though, I still like Windows 8. It's just that Microsoft doesn't realize that for people it's Metro that's a component of the desktop, not vice versa. And no matter how hard they keep persuading people that desktop is "just another app", people won't move as long as they can do things the familiar way. Which is, coincidentally, the better and saner way in W8.

    Also, I'm running W8 on 24/19 inch dual setup (because I'm cheap poor), and it's actually pretty sad that I could be running Metro apps on the smaller monitor with no problem, if they weren't that crappy.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @aapis said:
    My favourite Windows 8 experience so far is when it took 3 hours to remove it from my laptop for some reason. Presumably, UEFI, something something, fuck you that's why.

    It took 3 hours to reformat your hard drive? And you blame the OS you're removing? Or am I missing something?

    It wouldn't let me format the drive or boot from a disk. I think I had to disable something within Windows first, but the details are a bit fuzzy since it was about 9 months ago. In the end the only OS that it let me install was Ubuntu, so now I'm stuck with that. Would have been better off just buying a new drive and starting from scratch, but that wouldn't have been as fun!



  • I really like the Windows 8 TV commercials that show someone placing and resizing tiles with their fingers. Not even touch screen gestures, but physically picking them up and moving/stretching them. If only the real thing were anywhere near that easy?



  • @lolwtf said:

    I really like the Windows 8 TV commercials that show someone placing and resizing tiles with their fingers. Not even touch screen gestures, but physically picking them up and moving/stretching them. If only the real thing were anywhere near that easy?
    Microsoft is the mikeTheLiar of advertising, i.e., the worst of the worst. I have yet to see a Microsoft ad for anything that contains any useful information. Instead ,they prefer pointless crap like this.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    I have yet to see a Microsoft ad for anything that contains any useful information. Instead ,they prefer pointless crap like this.

    Isn't just that kind of the thing with "hip" ads?



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @lolwtf said:

    I really like the Windows 8 TV commercials that show someone placing and resizing tiles with their fingers. Not even touch screen gestures, but physically picking them up and moving/stretching them. If only the real thing were anywhere near that easy?
    Microsoft is the mikeTheLiar of advertising, i.e., the worst of the worst. I have yet to see a Microsoft ad for anything that contains any useful information. Instead ,they prefer pointless crap like this.

    It's funny how the title of the video is "Extended footage of the school girls", yet there are at least two boys. I call that "misleading advertising".

    Also, if MS ads were like MS conferences, they'd probably just show the words "Microsoft. We're so awesome" for 30 seconds.



  • @dtech said:

    @El_Heffe said:
    I have yet to see a Microsoft ad for anything that contains any useful information. Instead ,they prefer pointless crap like this.

    Isn't just that kind of the thing with "hip" ads?

     

    At least the apple one has a hint of class.  The Microsoft extended video seems really creepy - it's like watching a dubstep mix of exorcist.

     



  • @El_Heffe said:

    Microsoft is the mikeTheLiar of advertising, i.e., the worst of the worst.

    I'm beginning to think this isn't the best legacy...



  • @dtech said:

    "hip" ads
    iPhone 5S: subject to availability.

    Most stupid tagline ever.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Zecc said:

    @dtech said:

    "hip" ads
    iPhone 5S: subject to availability.

    Most stupid tagline ever.

     

    Read that as "OMG, you aren't going to let your asshole neighbour buy the last one before you. Are you? Do you really want to be the one idiot left out with a useless iPhone 5? Get your bitch ass to the Apple Store before we all laugh at you."

     



  • @dtech said:

    @El_Heffe said:
    I have yet to see a Microsoft ad for anything that contains any useful information. Instead ,they prefer pointless crap like this.

    Isn't just that kind of the thing with "hip" ads?

    They should show how it's really made. Instead of liquid gold becoming a phone, it would show chinese slaves working on a hot, smoky production line without their shoelaces so they don't commit suicide.


  • BINNED



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    There's no way to browse pictures one-by-one in a folder, unless you've added them to a photo library. Browsing from a thumbdrive? Sucks to be you.

    And if you (like me) keep your photos on a NAS that backs up to the cloud, you can add your (SMB) network share to your photo library just fine.

    Oh, but the photo app won't actually read them from there. It just completely ignores that part of your photo library...

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    Zooming out goes like this: 130%-120%-110%-100%-your photo library.

    At least it's not as bad as IE: What were they thinking?



  • @StephenCleary said:

    At least it's not as bad as IE: What were they thinking?

    Here's what they were thinking:

    IE ISN'T GETTING ENOUGH PRESS HOW CAN WE MAKE IT MORE POPULAR TO TALK ABOUT ALSO PASS ME MORE CAFFEINERGY SAUCE



  • @StephenCleary said:

    At least it's not as bad as IE: What were they thinking?

    The article is mildly interesting (basically it's a web designer that is getting his panties in a bunch about a proprietary viewport class). He's not all out against IE - he says that IE is a piece of shit when you resize the window in Metro but is behaving better than other mainstream browsers in desktop.

    However after reading this sentence I could not take him seriously:

    @The Article said:

    So basically Internet Explorer is telling me: "Our toolbar is more important than your content!" - AND gives me no chance to re-act to that behavior.

    I can't tell if it's a retarded mistake or if he is trying to be clever but that's just annoying. I almost printed out that page so I can shred it (a privilege only awarded to articles about "the death of the PC" so far). Then I saw the dude's picture and everything was clear:

    Rick the Surfer Dude Slash Web Designer. That guy is authentic enough, he can inject dashes if he wants to, he earned it.



  • @dtech said:

    Rather just install StartIsBack and pay the €2,25 ($3) and have a mostly-Win7-like experience and do everything legally than having an illegal installation or spending a lot of money on Win7. And it does have a nice taskbar

    OR you could just install Windows 8.1 which does the exact same thing, for free.



  • @Ronald said:

    @StephenCleary said:

    At least it's not as bad as IE: What were they thinking?

    However after reading this sentence I could not take him seriously:

    @The Article said:

    So basically Internet Explorer is telling me: "Our toolbar is more important than your content!" - AND gives me no chance to re-act to that behavior.

    Oh my god, he made a single, minor, grammatical error in a relatively long, and well-thought-out article. Let's hang him!



  • @The_Assimilator said:

    @Ronald said:
    @StephenCleary said:

    At least it's not as bad as IE: What were they thinking?

    However after reading this sentence I could not take him seriously:

    @The Article said:

    So basically Internet Explorer is telling me: "Our toolbar is more important than your content!" - AND gives me no chance to re-act to that behavior.

    Oh my god, he made a single, minor, grammatical error in a relatively long, and well-thought-out article. Let's hang him!

    It's not a minor grammatical error, it's a spelling error (there are lots of grammatical errors in that article). But more than a simple spelling error, it's an abomination. What if people were to call you "The Ass-imilator"?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Ronald said:

    @The_Assimilator said:

    Oh my god, he made a single, minor, grammatical error in a relatively long, and well-thought-out article. Let's hang him!

    It's not a minor grammatical error, it's a spelling error (there are lots of grammatical errors in that article). But more than a simple spelling error, it's an abomination. What if people were to call you "The Ass-imilator"?

    Maybe he meant to put a soft hyphen in but mistakenly put a hard one in instead?

  • ♿ (Parody)

    @PJH said:

    @Ronald said:
    @The_Assimilator said:

    Oh my god, he made a single, minor, grammatical error in a relatively long, and well-thought-out article. Let's hang him!

    It's not a minor grammatical error, it's a spelling error (there are lots of grammatical errors in that article). But more than a simple spelling error, it's an abomination. What if people were to call you "The Ass-imilator"?

    Maybe he meant to put a soft hyphen in but mistakenly put a hard one in instead?

    More importantly, this seems to signify that the Peak Troll crazies were right after all!



  • @boomzilla said:

    @PJH said:
    @Ronald said:
    @The_Assimilator said:

    Oh my god, he made a single, minor, grammatical error in a relatively long, and well-thought-out article. Let's hang him!

    It's not a minor grammatical error, it's a spelling error (there are lots of grammatical errors in that article). But more than a simple spelling error, it's an abomination. What if people were to call you "The Ass-imilator"?

    Maybe he meant to put a soft hyphen in but mistakenly put a hard one in instead?

    More importantly, this seems to signify that the Peak Troll crazies were right after all!

    Or maybe the web designers community is full of retards. A few comments found on that page: @Steve said:

    We constantly bemoan IE at our shop - no one likes it and its lost total respect for web developers.

    @Michael said:
    Hi Rick,

    Because of problems like this I've didn't upgraded my OS to Windows 8. I wanted to upgraded to Windows 8 and I've decided to watch some reviews about Windows 8.

    I was shocked to see that they've changed so much but in a bad way. I seems that they only focused on tablets and they forgot about the PC. Not having the oldie but goldie Start button, the IE Metro interface and problems like this, big icons that suggest you should tap with your finger (and the list can go on), it made to to wait for the next operating system from Microsoft.

    Anyway seems that you will have to migrate to other browsers :). A friend of mine says that Internet Explorer is for downloading Firefox, Chrome, Opera etc :).

    Best regards

    I don't know if it's an Hawaian thing or a web designer thing, but seriously I've seen better in the comments section on indiatimes.com. And not from people called Steve or Michael.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Ronald said:

    Or maybe the web designers community is full of retards.

    I won't deny this (what community isn't full of retards). I was just disappointed in your commentary on hyphenation.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @Ronald said:
    Or maybe the web designers community is full of retards.

    I won't deny this (what community isn't full of retards). I was just disappointed in your commentary on hyphenation.

    For some reason I "strongly" dislike "over-hyphenation". It's not as common as "over-doublequoting" and therefore does not "justify" a web-blog (yet) but it's still "annoying".


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Ronald said:

    web-blog
    What's that second 'b' doing there?


  • BINNED

    @Ronald said:

    For some reason I "strongly" dislike "over-hyphenation". It's not as common as "over-doublequoting" and therefore does not "justify" a web-blog (yet) but it's still "annoying".
     

    I got an idea. What about next you go ahead and derail every thread that you "should not quote the OP!!!". Then have flame wars about it. Good ole times.



  • @PJH said:

    @Ronald said:
    web-blog
    What's that second 'b' doing there?

    So according to you it's the 2nd "b" that should not be there. Interesting.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Ronald said:

    @PJH said:
    @Ronald said:
    web-blog
    What's that second 'b' doing there?

    So according to you it's the 2nd "b" that should not be there. Interesting.



  • @PJH said:

    but mistakenly put a hard one in instead
    That's what I told the police but they didn't buy it.



  • @The_Assimilator said:

    OR you could just install Windows 8.1 which does the exact same thing, for free.
    And this is how you know that somebody hasn't used Windows 8.1 yet.



  • @The_Assimilator said:

    @dtech said:
    Rather just install StartIsBack and pay the €2,25 ($3) and have a mostly-Win7-like experience and do everything legally than having an illegal installation or spending a lot of money on Win7. And it does have a nice taskbar

    OR you could just install Windows 8.1 which does the exact same thing, for free.

    You know, I find it kind of funny that what pissed the most people off about W8 was the lack of the Start menu, when the Start screen is used in the exact same way (Ctrl+Esc, start typing the name of the program, Enter). If anything, I find it somewhat better - or at least would find if I actually had the time cared enough to put the programs I use at the beginning.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    You know, I find it kind of funny that what pissed the most people off about W8 was the lack of the Start menu, when the Start screen is used in the exact same way (Ctrl+Esc, start typing the name of the program, Enter).

    "Exact same way" eh? God forbid some of us have muscle memory and very fast mouse hands and want to use them. And don't want to have the visual context switch of a program launcher that covers whatever else we were working on. And already used their desktops as a repository of program shortcuts that was not only more dense but also allowed icons to be positioned much more freely.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    when the Start screen is used in the exact same way (Ctrl+Esc, start typing the name of the program, Enter)
    Except that it puts Programs, Settings and Files to separate subpages, and keyboard navigation is clumsy - doing the same thing as in old Start Menu takes several more keypresses. 8.1 breaks this even further - it doesn't seem to find any Control Panel items that have a similar name as a program (eg. I've got ImDisk installed; in Start Menu typing imdisk would find it's executable [useless in this context, since that's a command-line program], Control Panel icon and the desktop shortcut to Control Panel icon; Start Screen in 8.1 only finds the useless executable; Start Screen in 8.0 found the same items as Start Menu, but to get to Control Panel result you had to press Tab, down, Enter, Enter, and press Enter again - compare this with Start Menu, where you only needed to press down twice, followed by Enter, and you could see the result immediately).

    Oh, and I almost forgot: in Start Menu, both what you were typing and the results were relatively close together. On Start Screen, the input box and categories are on the right side of the screen, the results on the left side - quite a distance on both 24" and 30" monitors I use.



  • Also, the start menu puts commonly used and recently installed software in the most accessible location, whereas the start screen just shoves everything at the end (the exact opposite) and leaves it up to you to organize your shit.



  • @Ronald said:

    @StephenCleary said:

    At least it's not as bad as IE: What were they thinking?

    The article is mildly interesting (basically it's a web designer that is getting his panties in a bunch about a proprietary viewport class). He's not all out against IE - he says that IE is a piece of shit when you resize the window in Metro but is behaving better than other mainstream browsers in desktop.

    No, he says that IE is a piece of unusable shit on Windows 8 Style User Interface Series. He says nothing about IE versus other browsers. That "proprietary viewport class" would be fine if it actually worked in IE 100% of the time. Unfortunately, there are three different browsers made by Microsoft called IE11, and only one of them actually renders text readably.



  • @Ben L. said:

    Unfortunately, there are three different browsers made by Microsoft called IE11, and only one of them actually renders text readably.
    Who cares about text, as long as we can see Grumpy Cat?

     


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